Cassandro Sighs

Posted on March 17, 2003 in Peace

When Bush I started bombing Iraq in 1991, I could not sleep that night or for three months: I dreamed of bombs slamming into rooftops and splinters flying all over. I could feel the clap of the fulminate of mercury thunder.

Why relive these bad times? For three months, I did not read the news or go online much. I did not participate in the joy that others felt at the decisive defeat of Hussein’s forces. I just slept when I could and read books. I went to work where stupid people raved about successes, like the way we torched a column of Iraqi soldiers who had grabbed anything they could to flee the metallic storm over Kuwait.

There’s not much I can say about this new war and this ultimatum that goes out today. There are signs that war-mongers in Turkey plan to pressure the Parliament, again, to approve the country’s use as a northern beachhead against Hussein. The dogs of war never, ever, give up.

A few months ago, I proposed a constitutional amendment. The aim of it was simple: no president can take us to war without a two thirds approval of Congress. I left provision for the occasion of direct attacks on our territory or our ships at sea. It fell down a hole and was lost.

We’ve got to do something. Soldiers need to understand that their job is to defend the Constitution of the United States. When an unelected president resorts to subterfuge to achieve his ends, the Nuremburg Conventions apply: they have a duty to disobey orders.

That’s the extent of my feelings. I’m tired, damned tired. People are saying things now that I said six months and more ago. I’ve been in the places where war lurks, I’ve seen what war does to buildings, and I have spoken of what I have seen. But my every mention of it seems to drop into an echoing hole and sometimes I have to ask was it at all worth it for me to state my positions? Must I always be Cassandro?

Some like chari fear reprisals from our snubbing of the UN. I don’t know that that will happen. But I know that the integrity of our hearts and minds will suffer. We’ve come to the point where our nation’s leaders — who came to power by cheating — now move in defiance of honorable war. They shall make the first strike. (I do not trust any report which will claim that Saddam struck the first blow. I say this in advance because I know my history. I know that Germany claimed, in 1939, that Poland struck first. It was a lie and this will be a lie.)

Even as I work on my short story, I see blood. We Americans claim to hate the slaughter of civilians and human sacrifice, but in the weeks to come, we will produce both.

I don’t have any new predictions. The path to war is pretty well set. Bagdhad will fall in a few days before our juggernaut. I could fall to my knees and pray for a miracle — something like the sun standing still at Fatima — but I know, as I knew that the demonstrations would do nothing more than make the participants feel like they did something (albeit a something that had no specific aim or purpose other than shouting “Peace now!”), that God either loves George W. Bush more than He loves the goodness that He claims we must all strive for or else there is no God. I will not pray to Evil or to a nonentity.

I am tempted go silent on the whole peace thing. I’m just another blogger, one who gets ignored on the subject until the last minute and then it is forgotten that I said anything. The credit goes to others. As I wrote to Les in a comment on chari’s blog:

….you’re always the drop of spray that hits the beach before the wave gets there.

Yes, credit is important. No one blogs or writes except that they want to influence others with their opinions.

I shall stick by the pledge that I made last October:

I shall not salute the flag or any individual wearing the uniform of the United States or participate in any mock patriotic displays because the country has departed from the quest for justice. I shall not lend my support to any event or action that confuses love for my country and its people with blind acceptance of evil.

The government is free to extort my tax dollars as it has all these years. I capitulate to its threats of violence against my person in this matter. But the money does not go with my blessings or my enthusiasm. And threats of violence shall not buy my silence.

But I shall not forget that these who want the war and those who wage it are human. If our boys come back injured or tortured in the mind, I shall not refuse them help. I shall not spit upon them or curse them as killers. I shall seek to ease their pain. I shall treat them as my equals. I hate no man.

And I shall seek ways to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people.

The blame for the evil that this adventure is sure to bring rests on its promoters. I am prepared to forgive, but they shall still be held accountable. I shall strive to see them removed and forever prevented from holding office in our future nation of the free.

The response to those words was entirely negative. If any other believed them, they have not taken the steps that I have to state that they share them. As long as people remain afraid of their neighbors and their government so that they will continue to give George W. Bush tacit support while mouthing the words of peace, we shall have this war and many others like it.

There’s a lot of pessimism out there. Pessimism that suggests that we’ve done all we can do, that it shall end with candle-light vigils and last minute protests.

Sigh.

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Addendum (Monday, March 17, 2003 8:03:43 PM):

I left this comment at Pulp Friction:

Just what do people mean when they say “let’s support our troops”? That we want them home safely? I can grant that. I cannot, however, offer my support without substantial qualifications.

Let’s stop pandering to patriotism just because we’re afraid we’re going to get spit on. The war is wrong. Now is not the time for wishy-washiness.

I don’t support our troops in this action. The action is wrong and they are under a moral obligation to resist participating in it.

This doesn’t mean that I will spit on them, call them names, or refuse to aid in healing their wounds. The wRong will claim that I am, but you see my words. I mean them exactly.

I am not going to pray for our victory (or for Hussein’s) or fly my flag for them as long as they remain over there.

I’m against this war. Period. It is all too easy to have one’s neutral “support for our boys while they are over there” turned into justification for the war and overlooking the slaughter of civilians. I support their being home here as neighbors and friends, but not as heroes in this unjust war.

How many of you who claim to be anti-war and have sat down to pray about this war are also praying for the Iraqi soldiers? Pray for peace, pray for the lives of every person who was slaughtered.

Our values are screwy if we don’t remember this. Consider the movie Black Hawk Down that made the deaths of 19 Americans a major catastrophe and then added in a foot note that one thousand Somalis had died in the same battle.

This war is made possible, in part, by all too many forgetting that one American life is worth one Iraqi life. We are not the most important people in the world. If you think otherwise, racism or vulgar nationalism has affected your thinking. Clear your mind so that you can think straight.

If this does not characterize you, then it is high time that you say exactly what you mean.